Get this: a Chinese woman was recently scared halfway to death upon discovering a strange creature hanging from its talons to the wall of her bedroom, in the middle of the night. What was it; a bat? Some lizard?

Sure, this is neat in itself – who’s ever heard of a snake growing a leg? The most common mutation observed in snakes is a second head (twice the creepiness for most, I’m sure). But what this is, is also clear evidence for evolution. Snakes evolved from previously legged species; occasionally, random genetic mutations can activate genetic markers (indicators for where to grow legs, teeth, skin or feathers, tails, etc. – just about anything) that had been switched off along the species’s evolutionary course. That is the case with this particular individual.

It amuses me to no end when those that abuse critical thinking try to present themselves as critical thinkers, as is the case with this article at Answers In Genesis. In this article they try to explain what the Ad Hominem fallacy is, a worthy effort if properly done of course.

They do an overall pretty decent job at explaining what an Ad Hominem is, until of course the commit the big booh-booh by giving this as an example of, what they seem to consider, and Ad Hominem.

“Christianity isn’t true. You just believe in Christianity because you were brought up in a Christian home. If you were brought up in the Islam religion, you would be a Muslim now.”

Ouch! To anyone who knows a thing or two about critical thinking it is obviously clear here that there may be a logical fallacy in this argument, but it is not the Ad Hominem. It is…drum roll…the Non Sequitur, an altogether different sort of logical fallacy, one where the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises! The premises (you are christian because you were brought up christian) does not lead to the conclusion (christianity is not true). This is not an Ad Hominem, more specifically not the circumstantial Ad Hominem, because the claim is not being rejected because of the kind of people who support it. That would be ridiculous because it would have to read as follows : Christianity is not true because christians believe it. In fact, the two things mentioned here have no bearing upon one another, therefore this is a Non Sequitur. The conclusion does not follow from the premises.

Why do I say “there may be a fallacy here”? Because it is not clear that “christianity is not true” is presented as a conclusion based on the following sentences, or as an unsupported statement. You can read the above sentences as two separate statements, the first stating what the person believes to be true, and the second stating why they think someone else holds a different belief. It does not have to be an argument, in which case there wouldn’t be a fallacy. If it is meant as an argument,then we have the Non Sequitur, but not the Ad Hominem!

The cherry on the cake comes next:

An evolutionist might argue:

“Creation isn’t true. You just believe in creation because you read that stuff on the Answers in Genesis website!”

Ah, that would be the Straw Man because an evolutionist, in general would not say that. There would be no need for it. We’d simply have to point to the fact that the creationist has not put forward any convincing evidence for his argument. That usually is enough to wrap up that conversation. It is also a bit of Poisoning The Well since this attempts to discredit “evolutionists” as people who rely on logical fallacies to win arguments, when in fact that is quite simply not true.

Oh AiG, leave the critical thinking teaching to those qualified to provide it, will ya?

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